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Monday, October 22, 2007

Recipe for Flourless, Sugar-Free, Gluten-Free Peanut Butter Cookies

These Flourless and Sugar-Free Peanut Butter Cookies are also gluten-free!

Saturday I was out cruising around the food blogs when I spotted this recipe for Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies on Cookie Madness. You can imagine how the world "flourless" caught my eye in this recipe title. I read through the ingredients and decided I would try making a flourless, sugar-free version of the recipe, switching the sugar for Splenda or Stevia-in-the-Raw Granulated Sweetener. I knew that Splenda or Stevia would have slightly different baking qualities than sugar, but I figured it was worth a try.

My cookies look very different than Anna's, and of course I couldn't just follow the recipe the way it was written; possibly this is why I'll never be any good at baking. I was using natural peanut butter, so I added a tiny bit of water to the batter, and also cooked them longer than Anna did, but essentially my main change was switching the sugar for Splenda (or Stevia-in-the-Raw Granulated Sweetener.) Of course, they don't taste exactly the same as peanut butter cookies made with sugar, but I was happy with the way these turned out. For a cookie with no sugar or flour at all, they were crisp and delicious. If you're not a South Beach Dieter, go ahead and make them with sugar, but for anyone who's limiting sugar and white flour in their diet, these cookies could be a nice bit of sweetness once in a while.

In mixing bowl, use electric beater to beat together the egg, Splenda or Stevia, baking powder, and vanilla for about a minute. Add peanut butter and water and beat together. (The mixture was fairly dry and broken apart. Just be sure the peanut butter is mixed well with the other ingredients.) Add peanuts if using, and blend into dough.

Use a large non-stick cookie sheet. Measure out a heaping teaspoon of batter for each cookie, then smash down with a fork. Bake 15 minutes, or slightly longer, until cookies feel firm and are slightly browned.

Of course leaving out the flour and sugar makes these cookies much more South Beach Diet friendly than cookies made with those ingredients. However, I'd still say this would be a "once in a while treat" for the South Beach Diet if you're actively trying to lose weight, since peanut butter is relatively high in fat and calories, and it's very hard to just eat one or two cookies.

Nutritional Information?
I chose the South Beach Diet to manage my weight partly so I wouldn't have to count calories, carbs, points, or fat grams, but if you want nutritional information for a recipe, I recommend entering the recipe into Calorie Count, which will calculate it for you.

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Posts may include links to my affiliate account at Amazon.com, and this blog earns a few cents on the dollar if readers purchase the items I recommend, so thanks for supporting my blog when you shop at Amazon!

OoOoOoo, this reminds me of a recipe I nearly made, once. Ran out of some ingredient and wasn't in the mood to go buy it.

What intriqued me was the addition of a tsp or so of cayenne powder. That and butter and sugar really sounded kinda good to me. Not sure what it'd do with the splenda and so forth. Thought I'd drop that on the floor, for ya.

Angela, I was also wondering that and actually I'm not completely sure if baking powder or vanilla have gluten. I know sometimes it can come from some unlikely sources. You might have your friend check the ingredient list and see what she thinks. I will also ask some of the gluten-free bloggers that I know.

I made them with almond butter instead of peanut butter. They were great --- I ate 3 for dinner! As an expat in Europe it's hard to eat healthy, so I really appreciate your recipes, even if I can't find all the necessary ingredients! :)

Anonymous, sorry to hear it; I didn't have that problem. Definitely they're a little "crisper" than cookies with flour but mine didn't break apart. Not sure what the difference would be, but maybe different brands of peanut butter have different amounts of oil.

I can't wait to make these! I'm going to tweek it a little more though. I'm going to try using egg substitute and I have tried a product which I really like called PB2. It's actually powdered peanut butter that you mix.(2TBSP mix to 1TBSP of water) This product has 85% less fat than even low fat peanut butter. It's also less than 2gms of sugar. I found it on the net. I've had weight loss surgery and can't do sugar or high fat products. Hey, the surgery worked, I'm down into size 3/4 jeans, and it's fun altering recipes to be able to eat things I used to!!!

I love the idea of sugar-free cookies, but did you know Splenda is totally toxic? Please don't eat Splenda!! Do a google search if you want to know more. Meanwhile, consider using Agave syrup - its low-glycemic, even diabetics can have it without an issue. I'm going to go make some agave-peanut butter cookies right now - yum!

Mardi, I obviously don't believe Splenda is toxic or I wouldn't be using it. I do like agave (and I've written about it), but I don't think it's always the best replacement for sugar in baking. I use Splenda occasionally, and for people who really need to avoid all sugars, (agave has fructose) I feel it's a safe option. I also believe everyone should make up their own mind about these things. I respect your right to make your own food choices, so please respect mine.

My friend Whitney and I made these cookies tonight, and they were awesome! We only had the Splenda packets, so once we emptied about 15 of those we only had about 1/4 of a cup of sugar, so we filled the rest of the cup measurement with Splenda brown sugar blend. They are amazing! Super sweet, but not crunchy like you said they would be, and certainly not crumbly. I think the brown sugar made them a little softer. We also made them big, but still got 14 cookies out of the batch. We thank you for the recipe.

I made these using stevia (the concentrated powder kind). I added just under 2 tbs of soy flour to make up a bit of the bulk, although next time I would use regular whole wheat flour. They tasted a bit bitter -not sure if it was the stevia, the brand of peanut butter or the soy flour, but overall the taste and texture were very good for a sugar-free and almost flourless cookie.

Thank you so much for posting these delicious recipes! I tried the peanut butter cookies and they came out delicious! I didn't have all the ingredients, so I had to improvise. I didn't have the vanilla extract, so I used vanilla cognac instead (it was the only thing vanilla I could find!) and I used a pinch of lemon extract. They are so moist and delicious! :)

Jessica glad you found a variation that worked for you. I just want to caution anyone who sees that comment that sometimes lower-fat peanut butters have added sugar, which would actually make them *worse* for South Beach Dieters, so be sure to check the sugar content if you're following South Beach.

I just made these and they are amazing! Thank you for this recipe! I substituted 1/2 c. agave syrup for the splenda like someone suggested, and then also, once half the ingredients were in the bowl I realized I was out of baking powder! I looked up substitutes and used 1/4 tsp. baking soda and 1/2 c. yogurt, and then didn't add any water. The batter was pretty liquidy, but they turned out super fluffy and moist. I recommend trying it with yogurt. Now if only I could stop eating them...

I can't let people leave links to other peanut butter types products that could be used to make these cookies. If I start allowing that type of link, my blog will be over-run with spam comments "advertising" various products.

I believe strongly that everyone has the right to make their own choices without having to apologize for them to anyone. People who don't want to use Splenda will obviously not want to make this recipe as written. That seems obvious, so I don't see why someone would bother to come here and leave a long comment lecturing me about my food choices. Those kinds of comments will never be published.

I'd like to see low calorie Spenda recipes using peanut flour also called PB2 and powdered peanuts or defatted peanut flour. Very few calories and seems like it ought to cook up like regular flour. I want to create a bar or cookie using already cooked steel cut oats (they are crunchy) peanut flour for flavor and protein that can also carry some almonds, cocoa and other items like blue berry and pineapple.In other words, a low cal, flour free, sugar free vehicle for tasty items sort of like an oatmeal cookie

My 8 year old daughter and 14 year old son are diabetics and as we speak these cookies are in our oven. I'm praying they like them because of the low card and sugar free of them. I know they are really excited to finally have a treat!

I'm sure everyone lives in differant areas I'm in Florida but I used a product called Walden farms as my peanut butter it has no calories sugar or carbs so my cookies now have nothing to them but the calories from the egg

I made these today, with some baker's chocolate chunks added. They are pretty good, but are almost too sweet and have a weird aftertaste. The idea is great, and I want to like them :)Maybe I'm just too picky about Splenda? I'm thinking of trying mashed bananas instead (not entirely sugar-free, I know), but I'm not sure if that would work...

I didn't use chocolate in mine, so I don't know how that would affect the taste. And I haven't made cookies with bananas so I don't have advice on that either, but if you're going to use banana you might as well just use sugar. I don't use Splenda much any more; I would make them with Stevia granulated now.

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